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It turns out it was an unfortunate miscommunication rather than an attempt to hide government business from the public that led to County Commissioner Dan Holub’s proposal last week not to publish the full text of public notices.

Unaware that the county had ceased publishing notices in the Hillsboro Star-Journal and Peabody Gazette-Bulletin long before a below-cost discount had expired because it wasn’t being used, Holub apparently was less concerned about saving money at the expense of informing the public than he was about figuring out how to keep information flowing at a reasonable price.

Thanks to his admirable willingness to discuss his laudable, true objective even after we had wrongly accused him of trying to score cheap political points, the county once again has the ability to publish its notices at heavily discounted rates simultaneously in all three authorized newspapers in the county. The county commission is likely to make a decision on our proposal on Monday.

We and he both jumped the gun because we didn’t have full information, and we’re sorry to have impugned his integrity in the process. The important lesson is, the more people know, the better their decisions are — another good reason why everyone in the county needs easier access than the Internet would provide to the full text (not just lawyer-written summaries) of what the county commission is doing.